Best of the net

Tenerife ... the most searched for holiday destination on the net. Photograph: Corbis

According to Travel Supermarket (travelsupermarket.com), more people search for holidays in Tenerife than any other destination. It is also the top spot with Thomson (thomson.co.uk) this winter, and the second most popular destination (after New York) with Cheap Flights (cheapflights.co.uk). So what is the attraction?

The simple answer is the weather (secret-tenerife.com/weather.php). With 12 months of sunshine, Tenerife attracts sun-starved Brits all year round. It also makes for an easy escape. Skyscanner.net lists low-cost flights from 20 UK airports. Despite the 4½-hour flying time, prices are low, with returns for April from just £40.

There's also an abundance of accommodation. If you want to keep things simple, Thomson.co.uk is not a bad pace to start. The veteran tour operator has been busy filling its pages with the kind of web 2.0 features we regularly praise on these pages, with lots of user-generated reviews, candid flickr.com images and Google Maps. There's plenty of chatter about the hotels, much of it suspiciously positive but you do come across some authentic complaints. Thomson says any property that is routinely slated gets taken off the site.

True, there's little in the way of high culture, but the snow-capped volcano Mount Teide, Spain's highest mountain (tinyurl.com/2mjvvv), is popular with hikers, and the north of the island is home to sub-tropical forest, with banana plantations and palm trees. The island is also renowned for its golf courses (golflospalos.com), diving (divingtenerife.co.uk), deep-sea fishing and whale and dolphin watching. Responsible Travel (responsibletravel.com/Trip/Trip100933.htm) offers a week-long tour in a two-mast sailing ship.

What's more, now is a particularly good time to go. The annual carnival in the capital city of Santa Cruz (carnavaltenerife.es) is one of the most extravagant in the world, culminating in a massive street party on Ash Wednesday (February 28). And it's much easier to reach than Rio.

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